The Muscogee (Creek) National Council says it will keep working to protect Mvskoke burials and sacred sites, including those in the Nation’s ancestral homelands in the Southeast. The tribe’s legislative body made the commitment in a press release dated Sept. 1.

The Council grounds that work in Article XI of the 1979 Muscogee Constitution, which covers burials and cemeteries. Its first three requirements charge the tribal government to “protect Muscogee burials and cemeteries,” to “participate in the reburial of remains of tribal ancestors,” and to “protect tribal artifacts as tribal intellectual (or common) property,” unless a tribal ceremonial ground holds them. The release says the Article’s reach extends to the Muskoghean cultural perimeter in the Southeast.

The release also credits the federal Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act of 1990 with beginning to reverse federal silence about attacks on sacred Indigenous places. The Council says it is committed to “providing financial resources, planning, collaboration and a presence in Alabama and Georgia” to protect Mvskoke cultural sites.